I am going to support the Conservatives - not because I think they are great in their current form - far from it. I just see them as the least-bad option. Trudeau is simply a disaster, and the NDP are not getting elected. We can not afford four more years of that bumbling idiot.
I’m under no illusions that the Conservatives will be great - I expect to roll my eyes at plenty of their ideas. But Trudeau is destroying this country and is a global embarassment.
There’s a financial crisis coming. It’s unpredictable when it will happen, but when it does it’s going to make 2008 look like a picnic. We are printing and spending money like crazy, and Trudeau’s answer is to create expensive new entitlement programs and expand welfare and other spending.
Remember the precautionary principle? The point to it is that in complex adaptive systems you cannot predict the response to shocks, so you are best to use a light touch and resist the impulse to engineer the system or try to push it in the direction you want. Unintended consequences abound.
Well, our financial system is also a complex adaptive system, and it’s now in a regime we have never seen before. And Trudeau’s response is to say he doesn’t care abiut monetary policy and he’s going to just keep pushing it harder and harder, confident that since nothing catastrophic has happened yet, we’re all good.
Imagine the debt as being a pile of sand. Every time we borrow we are dropping more sand on it. We all know that if you keep doing it at some point you’ll get a collapse, but every time you drop more on and nothing happens, you become increasingly convinced that you can do it again. And again. Until eventually the whole thing collapses and we either wind up in a deep recession, or we destroy our dollar and everyone’s savings along with it, or we live through a terrible period of inflation, high unemployment and austerity.
What Trudeau is doing is not sustainable, and I’ve been told repeatedly by me friends on the left that sustainability should be our mantra. We are borrowing heavily from our future. Millennials and Gen Z should take note, as they will eventually pay the highest price.
You can relax. Lots of economists reject Friedman monetarism on empirical and theoretical grounds and have reached very different conclusions. Debt is not like a pile of sand, inflation can be handled in many different ways, and the people who really hate it are creditors. The real questions to ask are what should the economy be designed to do? Who should benefit from it? Those questions reveal the political/ideological views behind the economists. Friedman was pretty clear that he was interested in protecting bankers and the wealthy, and so was happy to advocate “tight money” to return profits to the wealthy while letting unemployment rise. No job is a lot worse than “prices are rising but I have a job.” So before we argue economics, let’s return to those questions, slightly rephrased: what is an economy supposed to do? Who should benefit from the economic arrangements we want to see?
My short answers: “provide a decent way of life for everyone. Everyone should benefit equally.” While others may say that, we can see that often they don’t mean it, or less judgy, their actions are inconsistent with those statements.
Free random thought: talking about inflation and Weimar and Zimbabwe is the monetarist version of “Godwinizing” the discussion.
He’s was democratically elected and enormously popular at the time.
This is NOT a regime. Perhaps ask someone who has actually lived under one for more info.
Every single time you use the word ‘regime’, your giant personal bias screams so loud, any sentient points you may have made, are well silenced. How do you not hear it?
While it’s amusing, it’s seriously damaging any argument you might be making, in my humble opinion.
Economists do not agree on much. The models they use and assumptions they make lack the accuracy and sophistication to predict much. I like Trudeau personally - but still think debts important even if Covid was the right time to relax a little. That’s almost done. Relying on some ratio, not even correctly calculated, is iffy. I usually don’t agree with Sam Stone, but think he makes sense here. However, no party has made any real economic plans or entertained responsible spending or how to pay for that. Except perhaps a vague wish to balance the budget in half a generation. I will wait to see the platforms, before deciding from an uninspiring slate.
I expect Hari Seldon is correct. I would go further and say even if the NDP were to form the government, the resulting legislation would not be much different from the Liberals. I would only hope the differences would be meaningful to those most affected by them: no soldiers sent to fight in die in foreign wars, clean water to reserves, some environmental action, raises in employment insurance and welfare, improved funding on Medicare. But I have given up on the Leafs, the Canucks, and liberal democracy.
If the NDP were elected, or even the Conservatives, I would not foresee any dramatic changes in policy. The tone and rhetoric would differ, of course, and much is always made of the tyranny of little differences.
Which party has a vision to elevate Canada? How would foreign policy differ, on China, the US and other issues? Each party will trot out housing and child care and the Quebec nation and vaguely allude to taxing foreign property owners (why only 1%, Justin?), Internet behemoths and possibly the obscenely wealthy. Maybe they do it.
Or, much more cynically: “The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
I think a Conservative victory would make life worse for many people: transfer payments and thus welfare rates reduced; anti union legislation that would “inspire” some provinces to do the same; more overt racism and religious bigotry by government figures; more support for America’s next war, that sort of thing
Those things are possible, and much would depend on party leadership and priorities. O’Toole ran as a red Tory in 2016 and a “pragmatic” one more recently, but whether he has the full support of his party is open to question. Don’t know enough about him to say much, frankly. I suspect that some of what you say is true, some might be desired but is politically infeasable, some of it is fearmongering. The reason you could be right, however, is it is hard to say which is which. It is as possible little would change, that there would be unpopular decisions and subsequent reversals.
TL;DR. People talk about elected senates, Obamacare, unions and transfer payments until they try to change them.
That’s the biggest tell that the Conservatives don’t actually have a real plan to deal with any of this. Pretty much any time a political party starts talking in terms of “ten years”, you know they’re blowing smoke, because that’s at least two election cycles away. There’s no way they can guarantee still being the government that far out, so they know they likely won’t have to make good on that promise.
And if they do manage to remain as the government that long, they have ten years to find an excuse for why this promise failed.
Those of us somewhat concerned by religious actions in Quebec take little solace that no other party spoke up too loudly or would have likely intervened. (The Quebecois see it as an internal matter. One notes we have a Charter obstensibly to protect rights). I can’t see any party supporting an American war unless there is much wider global agreement. I am more pro-American than most Canadians, but Trump and pipeline decisions have affected Conservatives too.
Still waiting for any party to make their case about legal and privacy reform, corruption, reducing phone bills, improving regional transportation, increasing data measurements to allow for better planning and accountability, drug pricing…
It is encouraging to see child care, old age home and Pharmacare mentioned in passing, without a great deal of detail. I’m not sure exactly when parties decided that leaving things as vague as possible was the superior strategy - but there are things that could better differentiate the parties - they just are not going to go there.
Yeah, I fully agree. Sadly, you know that some people will fall for the myth of “the conservatives are better at managing the economy.” In reality, the CPoC will likely call for austerity which generally helps the rich (quelle surprise) and hurts everybody else. We don’t need somebody who will grow the economy, we need somebody who will reshape the economy such that everybody gets significant income growth and shrinks the wealth gap. While the situation in Canada is hardly as bad as the USA, it is rapidly growing out of control.
I think Trudeau is likely to get yet another minority. Still early of course, and anything could happen in the next few weeks, but for the reasons you specify and just a general lack of enthusiasm for Trudeau means another minority. I see a lot of people on my social media are voting NDP. Enough to split the vote and give an O’Toole win? Maybe, although I doubt it. If it looks like O’Toole might win, then I suspect some of these people will hold their nose and vote Trudeau.
I think a lot of Ontarians, who might resent the election call, and might have switched to PC, absolutely won’t based on Doug Ford’s performance.
Everyone was pretty impressed initially, but things have turned since then. Dougie is worried about big deficits, of course, so he’s sitting on money from the feds and not spending it. He also gave Brian Mulroney, on the board at Chartwell nursing homes (the ones the army most faulted for bad practices) a big medal. That was pretty offensive to people who lost loved ones in nursing homes where employees don’t get paid sick days, and need to work in more than one facility to earn a living wage. A lot of people died, they lost parents they didn’t get to see or say goodbye to. Even those who didn’t experience it first hand can feel that pain. He’s talked about sick pay, better wages, etc, etc. But he’s not really gonna spend that money, and everyone can see it.
During Covid, Doug Ford displayed more empathy than I thought he could. On some other issues, he has been rather less successful. How much provincial politics affects federal aspirations remains to be seen. Probably quite a bit.
At this stage, the Liberals are likely to win enough urban Ontario seats to take the province. Whether they will get a majority mainly depends on Quebec and repeating successes in Atlantic Canada, but this seems unlikely unless their platform is popular.
Things are looking tight in BC. They will fight for third place in the West. A surge in NDP support would damage the Liberals.
I think Trudeau well liked enough to win a minority government again. Some of this is due to a surfeit of alternatives with bolder visions and who people think might do a better job.
This is hardly the first election to discuss child care or nursing homes. Whether effective stronger actions are taken is therefore open to question.
I also think there’s a healthy suspicion if the PC get in, they’ll use the understandably high deficits as an excuse to SLASH tons of social programs, and begin to monetize schools and health care.